


Don't Call It a Void

by AstroGirl



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Kind of meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 06:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10848045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: It isn't a void at all, the place where he is.  It's exactly the opposite.





	Don't Call It a Void

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "Mental Health Issues," although I ended up approaching that prompt a bit obliquely. It should probably be noted that this story absolutely does not, and is not meant to, depict any actual real-life mental health issues. Gaster's difficulties are wholly and uniquely his own. Poor guy.

It isn't a void.

He hears people call it that. (Or sees them, or senses them, somehow. He's given up trying to assign names to the ways in which he perceives things.) They call it that, not in his own world, but often in the places beyond. But it's not a void. A void is, by definition, empty. And this place where he's found himself, this space-outside-of-space, is the exact opposite of empty. It's full. It contains _everything_. Everything, all at once, forever.

He believes that would have excited him once. Didn't he want to know everything, experience everything, understand everything? He thinks so. He thinks he believes that he did. He cannot say for sure. He doesn't remember who he was; he only remembers (or senses, or knows) what others say about him. In his world -- at least sometimes, when the weather is right and they remember -- they say that he is scattered and lost. So he is scattered and lost. They say he is listening. So he listens. They say his name, so he remembers his name. They say his title, so he knows that, too.

But they don't tell him who he _is_. Who he was. Who he never was, or might have been. Sometimes there are apparitions, and he doesn't even know if those are him or not. Did he look like that? Does he now?

It's not like there aren't answers here. The problem is, there are _too many_. This place is too full. His world, with its simple rules unfolding in potentially infinite loops, is only a drop in an ocean of... of _somethingness_. Existence, he supposes. "Existence" is as good a word for it as any. And it is easy for him to look out, around, to look beyond his world at everything else that fills this not-a-void with existence.

Or, no. No, that's not right. It isn't easy to do that. It's _impossible not to_. Impossible not to be caught in the flow, the off-and-on, the everything-at-once. Impossible not to see the words, the pictures, the music that flash acoss the face of this reality. Impossible to ignore the buzzing activity that flickers and dances around and over and through him. Impossible not to see the other worlds that come and go, the other people trapped inside them, unknowing. Thinking they're free, when they have to follow the rules laid down for them and will never escape into a higher reality. But what about him? Does that mean he is free, because he is here? It can't. It _can't_. He is more trapped than any of them. Trapped in his awareness of being what he isn't, of being where he is. And there are still rules here, he is certain. There are still rules, and he is still bound by them. Perhaps one day he will understand what they are. He is a scientist. He's sensed people saying so. Learning the rules is what a scientist does. What a scientist _is_. Perhaps he can cling to that, at least.

It would be easier to maintain a sense of who he is, what he is, even a comfortingly false one, if it were not for the windows. "Windows" is what he calls them in what passes for his mind, although sometimes the word seems to have a different meaning here. They look out into... elsewhere. Many, many elsewheres. They bring new words, new pictures, new music, streaming in from other not-a-voids, from, perhaps, a reality that lies beyond any of them.

And sometimes, in the words, in the pictures, even occasionally in the music... there is _him_. But never one definitive him. He comes in different shapes, or no shape at all. He comes with different personalities and different pasts. Sometimes he is evil, sometimes kind. Sometimes the people he has left behind love him and miss him. Sometimes they hate him. Sometimes they don't remember he was ever there at all.

Sometimes, he returns. He sees it, over and over. Versions of him slipping back into his world, or a world like it, or a world made from it. He wants that. He _wants_ it. _He wants it._ He cannot stay here, like this. It is too much. It is too much. He cannot process everything all at once. Cannot _be_ everything all at once. He is losing his mind. Has lost it. Is not sure whether it ever even existed. Whether anything was ever really him at all.

If only he could _know_ , could know who he was and how he once belonged, perhaps he could find a way back. But he doesn't know. There are too many of him. Too many of him, everywhere. They cannot all fit inside him, but they are trying. They are trying very hard. 

He is too full. He is too full of _hims_ to ever be himself. There is no void. No void. There will never be a void. 

Only too much of everything, forever.


End file.
